Hi William,

I do have an opinion on this, however, I didn't reply to your thread initially because I didn't think my opinion would be that useful to you as you are a much more experienced VSL user and forum member than me. [:)]

Anyway, do you have some experiment files that one could make an A/B comparison on?  I would think that using an individual reverb instance on each instrument could make each individual instrument sound great on its own, but because digital audio is amplitude cumulative my guess is that the whole ensemble would sound too muddy playing together.

Instead of using multiple instances of a single impulse response reverb (tweaked for each instrument) maybe what you really want is a single instance of a multiple impulse response reverb (i.e. MIR). [:)]

Brian

No, I am not an expert with Altiverb at all. But I did use individual track convolution for each and every instrument once (about 16 instances).  I rendered each track separately with reverb, and only then mixed them. It sounded startingly better than one where I used a more normal premix (strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion totalling four instances).  It didn't sound muddy, but sounded much more real and full.  I reasoned that this is because when you hear an orchestra live, you are actually hearing each of the those instruments producing their own reverb separately, and then that is "mixed" in your ears as you sit in the building.  So it is analogous to the individual track convolution approach.  You are NOT hearing a dry "wall of sound" (a premix) that then reverberates. So I guessed that this method might be superior to the usual dry premix approach.

I can see that nobody else here does this.  Perhaps because it takes longer to do than the usual premix approach which I admit is much more convenient.

I have been too lazy to do that A/B comparison, but will try to and post something.

Hello William,

to get some depth I use 2 - 4 reverbs with the same room or hall, each channel delayed by a different amount corresponding with the distance between the instrument groups and the listener. But I never had the idea to use a seperate convolution reverb (not altiverb, but Wizoo W2) only for one section or one instrument. It seems to be an interesting idea that is worth an attempt.

Best,

Rainer

To be specific about this idea, the steps would be :

1) Freeze each individual instrument (already panned and imaged correctly in VE) to dry audio

2) Combine all tracks in a DAW and make any corrections in balance still in the dry stage

3) Select an appropriate Altiverb and render a new audio file for each track separately

4) Combine these reverbed tracks and render the final mix with no additional processing

That's interesting Hetoreyn - I agree that Todd-AO is maybe the best general reverb for orchestral in Altiverb and also it is the only one that has variations in the impulse source location with the mike source the same position. That is how all the convolutions should be recorded for orchestral use, because you are essentially trying to emulate a fixed listening point with different sound positions - not the REVERSE which most of the impulses in their set have. 

I had to edit this as I did not mean it so definitively, but it does seem that anyone using Altiverb with different convolutions in all the supplied impulses except for that particular Todd-AO is somewhat distorting the sound by using the convolutions with different microphone positions.  And then changing the relationships further by adujsting dry/wet balance or the artificial speaker positioning as a workaround for the fact you cannot use all pure wet convolutions recorded from the same location but with different sound source positions.. I believe this is the idea behind MIR (?) and hopefully it will solve this problem which is very characteristic of orchestral sample performance.

.

 No, that method works for me just as well.  I probably overstated it as I often do - I didn't mean that wet/dry doesn't work. You HAVE to use it, because you cannot use pure convolution. That is what I meant -that you SHOULD be able to use 100% wet convolution with different sound source positions. This would be a pure way of doing it, as opposed to the compromise of wet/dry ratios which are totally artificial. In that real environment there is no such thing as "dry" signal.  Also,in Altiverb, the use of the "speaker placement" stage position adjustment is also artificial as it is doctoring the original pure sound impulse.

Lately I've been using an EQ--Plat Verb--Dir Mixer plug chain then Sound Designer thru a bus (this is Logic with 1st Edition btw)

This alows me to place the instrument in the stereo field with a localized verb/early reflection sort of thing.  The Plat verb has a warmer, shorter verb (1.8 ms) at 75-80% wet/dry ratio, I narrow and pan that with the Dir mixer, then send it to the main verb(s).  Also, I've been working with zero pre-delay on everything, so I can help kill that "dry" signal combined with reverb sound that William is talking about.

Since I'm on an old machine, I usually bypass the Plat Verb while I work, occasionally unmuting it to check the part with others in its family (all brass, for instance).  At the end, I will freeze most of the tracks for final mix tweaking of the remaining parts.

Works pretty well, and the dry, close VSL sits better with the Project Sam stuff (close or stage mic, as I send everything thru SDesigner in the end), for example.  Totally unscientific, I should say, as I am "earballing" the sound.

Clark